'Next-Door' Alien Planet Still Too Distant to Visit — for Now

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Astronomers have discovered an alien planet right in our solar
system's backyard, but residents of Earth shouldn't get their
hopes up for an exploration mission anytime soon. The newfound
world is much too far away for probes to visit using current
technology, experts say.

Researchers announced Tuesday (Oct. 16) that the scorching-hot
alien planet Alpha Centauri Bb, which is about as massive as
Earth, resides in the three-star Alpha Centauri system. While no
other star is closer to our sun than the Alpha Centauri trio,
they're still about 4.3 light-years away, making a close-up look
at the planet pretty much impossible right now.

A robotic exoplanet
mission launching today "would require about 40,000 years to get
to Alpha Centauri," Greg Laughlin, an astronomer at the
University of California, Santa Cruz, told reporters Tuesday.
"So, given our propensity for instant gratification, that's not
really an option that's on the table."

But Laughlin, who was not involved in the discovery, added that
attitudes could change if researchers made a few more intriguing
discoveries in the
Alpha Centauri system.

To put this huge distance into perspective: NASA's Voyager 1
probe, the most far-flung object ever launched from Earth, is
currently about 11.3 billion miles (18.2 billion km) into its
journey, cruising toward the edge of our solar system. Voyager 1
has thus covered less than 0.05 percent of the distance to Alpha
Centauri Bb — and the probe has been zooming through space for
more than 35 years.

Alpha Centauri Bb sits just 3.6 million miles (6 million km) from
its sunlike star, completing one orbit every 3.2 days. As a
result, the planet's surface is far too hot to support life as we
know it, researchers said.

But the solar systems containing a small, rocky world often have
multiple planets, Laughlin said, so it's possible Alpha Centauri
Bb has some siblings — perhaps even a world or two out in its
host star's "habitable zone," the range of distances that can
support liquid water.

If subsequent investigations do indeed find a potentially
habitable planet circling Alpha Centauri B — or one of the other
two stars in the system, Alpha Centauri A and Proxima Centauri —
they may provide the push to get a probe out there, Laughlin
said.

"You might see a groundswell of excitement to look at new kinds
of propulsion technologies, new kinds of missions that could get
to Alpha
Centauri — not manned, but putting an unmanned probe
there in a relatively short period of time, human-lifespan kinds
of time frames," he said.

Of course, some researchers are already trying to develop
next-generation, super-fast propulsion systems, which include
such concepts as nuclear rockets and antimatter fusion drives.

Whenever such advanced technology becomes workable, it might send
people as well as robotic probes hurtling toward Alpha Centauri;
the system is one possible target of the
100 Year Starship initiative, a project that aims to lay the
foundation for interstellar human spaceflight.

So anyone who longs for humanity to colonize other solar systems
should probably be rooting for astronomers to find a planet
somewhere in the habitable zones of the Alpha Centauri system.

"I think it really comes down to what the inventory of these
stars looks like, whether there will be the extraordinary effort
and excitement that are required to do those sorts of really
groundbreaking things," Laughlin said.